Decolonizing Sustainability: Indigenous and Local Conservation Systems from India in the Global Climate and Biodiversity Agenda

Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) manage large swathes of the world’s remaining biodiversity and are essential actors in achieving global sustainability goals. Yet, recognition and representation of IPLCs remain uneven across regions. Despite decades of stewardship, IPLCs in many parts of the world, including in South Asia, face systemic underrepresentation due to longstanding epistemic and structural injustices. In India, this invisibility is exacerbated by the lack of formal recognition of 'Indigenous Peoples'—instead, the state uses administrative category 'Scheduled Tribes', which does not align with international definitions. Drawing on four case studies from India, this paper illustrates how traditional governance systems offer viable, culturally embedded inclusive nature- and people-based approaches to sustainable transformative change. Our paper argues that beyond decolonizing conservation discourse, there is a need for reparative justice: to redress historical exclusion, restore land rights, and fund IPLC-led conservation directly. Recognition justice for South Asian IPLCs is a critical and often overlooked component of global environmental governance. India serves not as an exception but as a representative case of broader systemic gaps. Bridging these gaps is not only a matter of justice but an ecological necessity for achieving the Global Biodiversity Framework and the IPBES vision of transformative change.